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There’s been something on my mind for the past several months that I was reminded of on Tuesday night, as I watched the Public Safety Committee meeting. I often hear Oakland residents blaming all of Oakland’s problems on one council member (the council member varies based on the person), to the point where they accuse that council member of being corrupt or not really caring about Oakland. I try not to fall into that trap anymore, but I used to harbor such feelings towards one council member, Larry Reid.

My first exposure to Reid was back in 2004, when I attended the Public Safety Committee hearing on regulating medical marijuana dispensaries. At that time, there were a dozen dispensaries, all clustered in downtown Oakland, and the City was the first municipality in the state to see the need for regulations of this industry. I remember that meeting and subsequent meetings fairly clearly, and what I remember most was how Larry Reid seemed to dismiss the needs of medical marijuana patients and sometimes sounded very rude in his comments. To our community, it felt that he just didn’t care and would rather patients go to the illicit market.

Very quickly, Reid became my least favorite council member. I knew little about the Council and how the city functioned, but I knew that I did not like Larry Reid. All the negative medical marijuana regulations that came from the council, I blamed on Reid.

Looking back, I realize just how absurd and unfair that judgement was. Reid had legitimate, though misplaced, concerns about dispensaries. He had seen rampant drug use in his district and witnessed Oaklanders who spent their lives selling drugs. So Reid equated dispensaries with the black market and felt like this land use was being pushed onto Oakland, while other neighboring cities were not doing their part to accomodate dispensaries (which is true, especially South of Oakland). And the medical marijuana dispensaries had not fully done their part in educating Reid. I doubt patients from his district or dispensary employees from his district met with him to explain how dispensaries were a vital part of Oakland.

On Tuesday night, as I watched Reid and the other Public Safety Committee members discuss Reid’s proposed curfew for juveniles, I was reminded of this. I am entirely opposed to the curfew but could see that Reid truly meant well. He sounded saddened that the curfew had not passed and explained that he was not trying to victimize youth, but to ensure young people could live in a safe environment. He called on the community to reach out to him and other council members to help develop a solution and to address the problem of youth violence.

Look, I know we’re not always going to agree with the decisions of particular council members (or sometimes a terrible unanimous decision by the Council), but to me it’s clear that all of the council members mean well. Everyone of them cares deeply about Oakland. If they didn’t care, why do you think they’d be on the Council? It doesn’t pay well, it’s an incredibly difficult job, and their motives are constantly questioned. But we all have different policy ideas for making Oakland a better place, and sometimes those policy proposals are going to piss us off. That doesn’t mean it’s necessary to hate a council member or to think of a member as evil. Instead, it might be more productive to turn that negative energy into action and to try to work with the Council to make the changes you’d like to see in Oakland.

One Response to “(Dis)respect for the City Council”

Gosh darn it, I love me some Larry Reid. His objections to dispensaries is smart. as WC, Lafayette, Orinda and all neighboring cities nix this idea, Oakland is going to ground zero for drug distribution. It is also a crying shame that hose darn other people do not see the value in the curfew measures that Larry was proposing. I suppose if white children were roaming the streets and skipping schools they would be a bit more concerned, but as long as little brown children are dying who cares. Larry had a process to get these children the help that they need. Larry had a process to get young girls caught up in the sex trade off the street, but this city only cares about making revenue from selling dope. No one wants to expend the resources it will take to get a child off the street and into the social services the child needs.

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